


O Tannenbaum

by Elsane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-23
Updated: 2007-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 15:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsane/pseuds/Elsane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas holidays at the Potters', seventh year, and walking into the woods to find a Christmas tree is not going so well this time around.  Features Marauders variously cold, cranky, and closeted, enchanted mittens, and a great quantity of snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O Tannenbaum

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for such_heights, to this prompt:  
>  When I'm with you, I am calm  
>  A pearl in your oyster  
>  Head on my chest a silent smile  
>  A private kind of happiness  
>  You see giant proclamations  
>  Are all very well  
>  But our love is louder than words  
>  \- Sunday, Bloc Party.  
> Many thanks to athenejen for a brilliant beta.

"Not that one," Lily said, then tucked her nose back under her scarf. Her cheeks were pink, and a few stray strands of hair, caught in her scarf, fanned out across her face before they vanished into the twist of blue wool.

Remus, his mittened hands snugly in his pockets, took a second, dubious look at the tree in question. Ordinarily they would be back at the house by now, stretched out by the fire with chocolates, cheese, and gingerbread, playing cards and arguing and very occasionally helping Mr and Mrs Potter put ornaments on the tree. This year, though, they had been out for hours, an abortive attempt at snowballs first and then an endless trek through the forest, and this tree, like all the others, looked perfectly fine to him.

"Why not?" James said. He was kneeling at the foot of the tree, his trousers damp and snow-caked, and fat snowflakes dotted his hair like bits of tissue after a bad shave. "What's wrong with it?"

"It has a big hole on this side. See." She pointed with her mitten at a gap in the branches.

"Oh?" James got to his feet. "Blast. You're right. Good eye, Evans."

Remus thought Lily smiled, but if so it was safely within the privacy of her scarf.

He gave her one more month.

He was glad for that, really. He was even happy enough to have her at the Potters' over the holiday. She was a friend, and he wanted her safe, he wanted her happy; he wasn't above being relieved, either, that James' repressed prankish urges couldn't come bursting out in a vast splatter of cinnamon-scented doom during the holiday. It was just that he hadn't wanted to spend his holiday dutifully playing out his supporting role in the epic James-and-Lily drama.

Especially not now.

"There's a nice one over here!" Sirius called, and Remus felt his heartbeat stutter.

Peter came crunching toward them, his breath puffing out in white streams. "He's right, it's a really good one, come see."

Remus didn't need much of an excuse. They had agreed, the two of them, in a hushed and hurried conference after breakfast, to be circumspect: "Yes," Sirius had said, flicking his cigarette butt into the whirling snow, "it's hardly the time to tell the Potters."

"Or Lily," Remus had said, and, when Sirius had frowned and did not answer, he'd added, "We should be careful. We might arse it up for Prongs." He did not say that James and Peter, too, might not yet be wholly comfortable watching the two of them together, for all they claimed to be all right with it.

He didn't think he had ever wanted less to be careful.

He ducked around a low branch that threatened to dump snow down his neck and there was Sirius, looking up at a sturdy young spruce, absently brushing his mittens together. He turned at Remus' approach and flashed him a radiant smile, brief but terrifying in its focus, and Remus felt his own face crack open helplessly in response. He wanted to kiss him. He wanted to throw snowballs at him. He came closer, wading through the crossed lines of footprints, until his sleeve brushed up against Sirius', and Sirius made a little funny shape with his hands, awkward in his stripey mittens, then punched him on the shoulder.

Lily, James, and Peter came up beside them, and Remus shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and tried not to smile.

"Got one for you, Prongs," Sirius said.

James gave the tree an evaluatory eye, hands on his hips, head cocked. "It's too tall."

"It is not," Sirius said.

"It kind of is," Remus murmured.

Sirius punched him on the arm again, harder. Remus rubbed the spot and dipped his head, smiling.

"There's always Shrinking charms," Peter said.

"No," James said vehemently. "Last time we tried that the spell wore off on Boxing Day. It took Mum months to fix the hole in the ceiling. But I suppose we could just cut it off a little high."

"Oh, don't do that," Lily said. "It would be such a waste. There must be a nice tree somewhere in these woods of yours, Potter."

James said, "Of course there is! These are brilliant woods. We always find great trees. I don't think we've been this way yet?"

"You do remember the way back to the house, don't you?" Lily said, but she let James put a hand on her arm and point her off into another clearing.

Remus sighed. His nose was frozen and he couldn't kiss Sirius and he was bored. He thought wistfully of cocoa and biscuits back at the house. If he couldn't kiss Sirius or have proper snowball fights, he might as well not do it in comfort. At this rate, they might not even have time for a round of Snap before he had to go home.

"Tired of tree hunting, Moony?" Sirius said, low.

"It took a lot less time without Lily," Remus said, then regretted it. He wasn't sure how Sirius felt about the strange new shape of inevitability.

"It did." Sirius's voice was rich with mischief. "But look, as long as Prongs is so distracted, we could go off over here and you could look for _my_ wood, how does that sound?"

"_Yes._" Remus's brain flooded with possibility, with flashes of muscle, lips, and skin, recent, revelatory. He licked his lips. "Wait. I don't think we can."

"No, I know," Sirius said, but slipped an arm around Remus's waist anyway.

"Sirius! Remus!" James shouted. "Come look at this one!"

"Fuck," Sirius said, under his breath, then yelled, "Just coming!"

Remus snickered -- he couldn't help it -- and Sirius, magnificently, flushed. Remus laughed harder.

"I'll get you for that later," Sirius said. His arm tightened briefly, a promise, before he started off towards James.

"Do," Remus called to Sirius' back.

Sirius turned halfway around. "Aren't you coming?"

Remus shrugged. "In a bit." He had no doubt that this tree, too, would be found wanting.

"All right, then," Sirius said after a moment, his brows drawing together, and looked back over his shoulder as he went.

It was all a bit of a joke, really, trying so carefully to reassure James and Peter that this new arrangement was nothing threatening, nothing that would damage what they did together as Marauders, when all along the rules had been shifting underneath them, beyond his control.

He cupped his hands over his nose to warm it and grimaced at the smell of wet wool.

_Later_. He thought about Flooing his parents and telling them he would be staying overnight. Then he imagined having to face the Potters over the breakfast table in the morning, after messing around in their guest room, and changed his mind.

And then, of course, there was Lily.

Dear Voldemort, he imagined writing, please instruct your followers to stop sending death threats to Lily Evans. As she finds herself consequently unable to return home, she is staying at the Potters for her own protection and putting a crimp in my holiday. I appreciate your attention to this matter. Yours sincerely, Remus J. Lupin.

Damn it.

He dropped to a crouch and took off his mittens in order to scrape a handful of snow together into a snowball. Mrs Potter, tsk'ing at the weather, had produced a box full of heat-charmed mittens from the nether depths of her closet and refused to let them out of the house until they'd taken a pair apiece. The mittens were knitted in a variety of horridly cheerful patterns and, as they'd found out as soon as they got outside, were warm enough to turn snowballs into a disappointment of slush. Remus almost wondered if that was what Mrs Potter had had in mind all along.

His fingers were red and clumsy by the time he slipped them back into his mittens, and the warmth was painful, but he had made a considerable pile of snowballs and it was more than worth it. He flicked his wand, then winced when the snowballs stayed resolutely in place but the spruce behind them curled all its needles up like baby ferns.

"_Finite Incantatem,_" he said, annoyed with himself. He flexed his frozen fingers and took off his mittens, and tried again, with more attention. This time the snowballs floated up and hovered in formation.

He set off after Sirius and the others, following the footprints deeper into the forest, his flotilla of snowballs sailing along behind him.

"Remus! Oi!" James' voice, closer.

Remus smiled to himself and cut sideways, then circled around, stepping carefully and quietly through patches of bracken bent double by the snow.

He caught sight of Peter's Gryffindor-bobbled hat through a screen of trees, then Lily's unmistakable hair. He crept up cautiously to crouch behind a gnarled fir and peered through its branches at the others.

They were in a small clearing, which was good; just the right amount of open space for a proper battle. Only Peter was looking at trees. Lily was frowning, the anxiety that never fully left her face anymore easy to read in the tension between her eyebrows. James kept shooting sideways glances at her, alternately hope and concern, and Sirius stood beside him, hands in his pockets, sullen.

Remus watched the directions their heads turned and sneaked further around the edge of the clearing to get as far behind them as he could.

He plucked a snowball from the air and whispered a quick charm to set it spinning on the tip of his wand. He stepped out into the open and, as the others turned, the first glimmerings of surprise on their faces, he grinned broadly and brandished his wand. Forgoing a sneak attack meant that he would shortly and inevitably get pounded into the ground, but, well, that would have happened anyway, just later on.

And it was all worth it for the spluttering sound that James made when Remus sent the snowball soaring off with a quick flick of his wand and got him square in the spectacles. James gaped blindly for moment, then tucked his spectacles into his coat and scooped up a handful of snow.

Remus, meanwhile, had hit Peter neatly on the chest, then fired a snowball at Sirius, who, with more warning, had managed to dodge. Remus ducked easily around James' outraged barrage of slush, and launched another missile at Sirius. This one hit home, and Sirius yelped, then sighted along his wand and exploded one of Remus' own snowballs all over Remus' face.

Remus happily howled his outrage and pelted Sirius, until he realized a heartbeat too late that he hadn't been watching Peter. Slush smacked against his neck, soaking his scarf and trickling down his collar. "Yargh," he said, not very coherently, and managed to send a couple of snowballs off after Peter before he had to duck to avoid the sudden flurry of proper snowballs coming from James.

He darted behind a tree, just in time. Several snowballs splatted against the trunk, and one crashed into his own floating supply, knocking them out of orbit. He peered around the trunk, locating James and Peter, but not Sirius. Lily stood at the far edge of the clearing, arms folded, mouth quirked. Remus lobbed a snowball apiece at James and Peter, mostly a warning, and succeeded in knocking off Peter's hat. Then he looked around, with a sneaking sense of doom, for Sirius.

Doom arrived with a gleeful shout and a wave of snow shooting up into his face, followed by a flying tackle while he was still blinded. Pressed into the snow, Remus said, "oof," and twitched his wand while he still could to bring several snowballs down on Sirius' head. He was almost out of ammunition.

"You mad bastard," Sirius said fondly, and ground Remus' face into the snow.

"Prongs and Wormtail," Remus gasped, and Sirius let him up.

Sirius grinned at him and twirled his wand. "On three?"

"You're on." Remus stuffed his mittens in his pockets and readied what was left of his arsenal.

They burst out around the tree, surprising James and Peter, who had been sneaking forward in ambush. Remus sent the last of his snowballs off at Peter with a flick of his wand, and bent to make another, one-handed. Sirius whipped his wand down in a long diagonal sweep, sending great sheets of snow up at James. Peter got Remus on the thigh, and James got him on the cheek, and then the battle was joined in earnest. He wasn't sure who threw the first snowball at Lily. Or maybe no one did, maybe she just got tired of standing at the edge of the clearing watching them stagger around like lunatics and decided to join in.

It was all chaos after that, ice stinging his cheek and another of Peter slush bombs dripping down his shoulder, snow in his face from Sirius's spell, or perhaps someone else's by now, he wasn't sure. He twistedand ducked and sent his snowballs off with hands and magic however he could. He was freezing cold and laughing so hard he could barely aim.

When all the accumulated snow in the clearing rose six feet in the air, he had a single breathless moment to look up at the hovering grey mass, almost enough time to think how very heavy snow could be.

Then the world went white and sounded like _whumpf_.

When he caught his breath again he was on the ground, buried, spitting out snow.

He freed his arms first and cleared the ice from his face. The clearing looked strangely sunken, all the snow dense and flattened from impact, with irregular snowless patches where he and the others were digging themselves out.

"I think Lily won." James' voice was shaky with amusement, or awe.

Remus, Sirius, and Peter all turned to stare at Lily. She was flushed and sheepish and proud, on the ground with the rest of them, propped up on her elbows. Her shoulders shook with suppressed hilarity, and the snow heaped atop her hat crumbled down across her face.

"That wasn't quite what I meant to do," she said.

"It was very impressive and a decisive victory," James said staunchly, and Lily let her head drop back and laughed out loud.

Maybe less than a month, then, Remus thought, and was glad.

He got to his feet, brushing off his trousers and regretting it when his mittens turned the snow to icewater. "Er. Has anyone seen my hat?"

"_Accio_ Moony's hat!" Sirius said lazily. By his feet the snow quivered and heaved before the hat burst out and soared into his hands. He shook it out, and, with a grin at Remus, tugged it onto his own head.

It was ridiculous, Remus thought, to feel giddy just because some thieving berk was wearing _his_ hat and looking really quite absurd.

"Can you do my wand?" Peter said at his elbow, and Remus blinked and dragged his eyes away. "I dropped it when the snow hit."

Remus Summoned Peter's wand for him, and then after a moment of consideration retrieved his hat as well, as it was his fault that Peter had lost it.

Sirius said, "Oi, Prongs, you've turned your ear into an aubergine."

"No, what, really? I thought you just clocked me proper." James gingerly felt around.

"Someone's wand slipped," Remus said. He hoped it wasn't him. "Everyone try _Finite._" He picked his way across the clearing to Sirius.

"You must be freezing. Your scarf is soaked," Sirius said, softly, gruffly. He touched his fingertips very briefly to Remus's neck.

"I'm all right."

Sirius laid his wand along Remus' collar and murmured a drying spell, and this, too, had been made new, warmth and the invitation of warmth, and Remus made a small sound of gratitude and leaned closer without meaning to. Sirius cleared his throat and brushed snow from Remus's shoulders and back, thumping, brusque, and Remus closed his hands into fists in his pockets in order not to reach out and clear the ice from Sirius' hair. That, surely, would be too obvious.

"James Potter, your ears look frozen!"

Across the clearing, Lily took one of her mittens off and covered James' ear with her palm. "They are!"

He ducked away, and she, laughing, stripped off her other mitten and pulled the pair of them over his ears, where they flopped over, thumbs out.

"It's getting dark," Peter said. He kicked moodily at the snow, his arms pulled snugly to his chest against the cold. "I have to be home for supper."

"Oh," James said, looking up. He was still fiddling with Lily's mitten. "We should hurry up before my parents decide to send the dogs out for us."

"I didn't know you had dogs!" Lily said. "I haven't seen them. Where do they stay?"

"Do you like dogs?" James said hopefully. His eyes slid to Sirius, who glowered and shook his head. Undaunted, James turned back to Lily and went on, "I could Transfigure you some dogs. Our fire pokers make gorgeous basset hounds."

"Do you turn your household implements into animals often?" Lily said, with the kind of fascination that usually came against better judgment.

"Er. Well. If we're out much longer, my father truly will start turning bread boxes into bloodhounds."

"I don't believe it," Lily said, "people actually use all that animal Transfiguration for something."

There was an awkward moment while they all tried not to look at each other. "Er," James said. "I really could make you some dogs."

"You don't have real dogs, then." She sounded disappointed.

James said, "Well --"

"No," Sirius said firmly.

"Sirius wouldn't like the competition," Peter said, snickering.

Lily looked from one of them to the other, her eyebrows rising. "Even your friends think you're a dog, Black."

James burst into a fit of coughing and Remus said, blandly, "He eats anything." Sirius elbowed him hard in the ribs at that, and Remus dodged away, laughing.

Lily was frowning now. "Are you going to let me in on the joke?"

Remus looked at James first, from old instinct, but James only shoved his glasses higher on his nose and gave him a steady look back.

"Soon, I think," Remus said, suddenly, recklessly, happy.

She tilted her head, thoughtful, then smiled at him, tentative but genuine. "All right," she said; "I'll hold you to that."

"Good," he said faintly, and felt breathless, as if he had been running.

James beamed at him, though, and Sirius put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"We still need a tree," Peter said, cross.

"That one would do, wouldn't it?" Lily said, pointing.

"Really?" James said. Even Remus could see it was crooked. "I mean, yes, absolutely, brilliant."

James and Sirius between them got the tree down, and James turned with great ceremony to Lily and asked her to Levitate it. They made their way back out of the woods, with the occasional pause to maneuver the tree through narrow spots, and halted at the edge of the forest to light their wands against the dusk. Over the curve of the fields the lit windows of the house were just visible, a faint glow through the steadily sifting snow.

James gave Remus and Sirius a long look, then turned to Peter and said, "Help me steer this thing, would you?"

Peter shot Sirius a strange glance, not entirely comfortable, and Remus shifted his weight uneasily. He had expected any problems to come from James, not Peter. When Peter looked at him next, he had trouble meeting his eyes. But Peter smiled, then, if tightly, saying, "Sure, Prongs," and Remus let himself hang back while they made to lift the tree once more.

Lily and James went on ahead, the tree floating between them, their wands throwing twinned blue parabolas across the snow. Peter followed a few steps behind, guiding the tree with a steady hand on its trunk.

Remus found himself walking more and more slowly, not wanting, now, the light and bustle of the house, or politeness in front of parents, or the Floo to summon him home. This was enough, Sirius at his elbow, the feathertouch of snowflakes in his hair and on his cheek, the snow swirling about them in the light of their wands, delineating this small and luminous space for their own, always, now.

"_Nox,_" Sirius murmured.

Remus halted, and Sirius turned toward him. In the dying light his face was all planes and shadows, and the faint smudges of snowflakes, pale against his hair.

"Moony." Sirius' voice was hoarse around the edges. He put a hand on Remus' waist; hesitated.

Remus grabbed his scarf and pulled him in.

Sirius' lips were cool at first, brushing soft across his own, then as they parted Remus inhaled, _snow, Sirius_, pulled him closer, and had no more thoughts of cold. His mittens slipped too easily over Sirius' coat, but he could still feel the breadth of Sirius' shoulders, the curve of his hip and back beneath all the layers of cloth, and Sirius' hands opened in the small of his back, Sirius' arms were close around him.

"Padfoot," he breathed when the kiss broke, and then their mouths were together again, Sirius' hand skating down his back and around, and he wound his own hands under Sirius' scarf and into his collar, needing skin and not finding any, and kissed him harder, wanting.

Remus drew back in order to take off his mittens, to unwind scarves, slip hands between buttons, but Sirius nodded sharply and took half a step away, letting his arms fall. Remus could hear his breath, fast, shallow.

"_Lumos,_" Remus said, shakily, and light bloomed, showing Sirius' eyes, dark and glowing, and his lips, parted.

Sirius stretched a hand out, and Remus took it, held it tightly while he looked at Sirius, too happy even to smile.

Sirius leaned in and kissed him again, fierce and quick, before they started toward the house, their hands clasped in the darkness behind the wand. When they were close enough to see Mrs Potter through the window, her arms full of ornaments, they moved apart, and walked the rest of the way with a hand's breadth of space between them.

Remus opened the door into a rush of warmth and firelight, and the scent of gingerbread. James was singing carols along with the wireless, badly, and Lily and Peter were laughing.

"For God's sake, boys, close that door!" Mrs Potter greeted them, and from the sitting room Lily called, "I poured you eggnog!"

Sirius drew the door shut behind him, and as Remus stomped the snow off his boots, he thought he could feel every place on his body that Sirius had touched, the prints of the mittens warm and glowing.

"Come help us decorate the tree," Mrs Potter said, pressing a bauble into his hands, and Remus came into the sitting room, where Mr Potter stood on a stepladder winding skeins of lights around the tree and his friends clustered close around the fire.

Remus nestled the spun glass ball carefully into the branches. It gleamed in the firelight, beautiful, fragile, enclosed. He sank down on the hearth, accepting eggnog from Lily and a hand of cards from Peter; but instead of the cards he looked at Sirius, who leant in the doorway, watching him, his dark hair rumpled from the hat, his mouth quirked sideways in a small and private smile.


End file.
